Today's piece of blatant puffery masquerading as market research comes from Geek Squad the embarrassingly named in-store tech support oppos for Carphone Warehouse.

GS/CW would like us to know that folk in Edinburgh will - on average - spend £126.60 on tech gifts this Christmas, the highest in the land apparently.

The firm points its corporate finger at Southampton residents as the nation's group of meanest spenders on technology presents: they cough up, on average, just £47.30 on such gifts. They're a bit pants in Hants, in other words.

This says nothing, of course, other than Edinburgh has some higher tech spenders than Southampton and the 13 cities listed in between do.

Perhaps Southampton folk are simply keener to present their friends and relatives with life-affirming stuff like books, booze and boxes of chocs, than to hand over shiny-but-bland gadgetry?

Geek Squad didn't say how it had come by this information - there's some vague reference to a survey in the press release - but only an utter, utter cynic would conclude the numbers were made up to pad out an announcement that Geek Squad will answer tech queries by phone and Twitter over the Christmas break.

What, Scroogey GS not letting its staff have plenty of time off over the festive season? ®